Messages

81

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: October 08, 2013, 11:44:03 AM »

Drives enclosure, PC enclosure, pedestal etc. are back from the paint shop. Here they are after some assembly. The front plate engraving is in progress at this time. Ball screws and servo motors assembly fixtures will start getting machined tomorrow.

Zafar

82

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Bridge Port Series II, retrofit project

« on: September 29, 2013, 09:51:25 PM »

Hi Scott,

I am a mechanical person. Your electrical stuff is way too cool for me . I only can wish that some day I can build an electric cabinet as well organized as yours. I am learning a lot from your work. Waiting for more photos.

Cheers,
Zafar

83

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: September 25, 2013, 05:48:07 AM »

Khalid,

The SS-USB gives two parallel ports worth of I/O's and SS-Etherenet give three PP's. On the other hand UC100 is a very compact size (just the size of a 25 pin connector cover) and gives just one PP. UC300 gives you 5 PP's worth of I/O's. UC300 also gives you two analog inputs and two analog outputs with these. I am using UC for their superior support for I/O's. A machine under development here in Karachi needs 46 I/O's so I went for the UC series. Price of UC100 is 80 Euros and for UC300 is 105 Euros. If you need one, do let me know. I am going to order a few in weeks to come.

Zafar

84

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: September 25, 2013, 04:03:07 AM »

Enclosures for drives, inverters, PC, screen, keyboard etc. have arrived too. Have to cut them for cable glands, vents, cooling fans and mounting brackets. Then send them to the paint shop. Another two days work. Almost all the hardware is here. Just the bearings are remaining. Two sets of angular contact bearings and a deep groove ball bearing. Then the machining work will start for the mounting brackets.

Zafar

85

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: September 24, 2013, 12:23:44 AM »

The motion controllers from cncdrive.com arrived yesterday. UC300 goes into this one. UC100 is for another machine. This is going to be my first experience with cncdrive's motion controllers. I've read good reviews about it and with my experience with Balazs, I am confident that it will go along well like his other products.

Zafar

86

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: September 18, 2013, 01:21:07 PM »

This seems not a big project;)

This is not going to be as big or complicated (I hope) as the one we did together. It will be as much fun, that's for sure. Fun is the thing that drives us after all

Zafar

87

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Prima Lathe conversion

« on: September 18, 2013, 10:16:54 AM »

Motors, drives and VFD inverter are here. 750W AC servos, 2.2 kW sensorless vector inverter. Have to arrange for their enclosure cabinet and the front panel box tomorrow. Also have to design the ball screws mounting fixtures in CAD. The x-axis slide has too little space beneath it to fit a ball nut. I am thinking about a rotating nut mechanism for x-axis. Timing belts and pulleys for coupling motors to screws. Angular contact bearings for the screw ends. We are going to need 78-hour days .

88

Modbus / Re: Mach3, Arduino, Modbus and MPG

« on: September 18, 2013, 08:09:57 AM »

Zafar,

   I have a cheezy, Arduino here, and there is a "Timer" style kinda function you can call.
The resolution of that time would need to be in the ms granularity.
In any case, the "Tick Counter" in the arduino would need to at the minimum be MUCH faster,
than the 10hrz update loop.

If it where me, I would then send that Tick Value across the modbus in the standard 16 bit register,
I would then map that register address (in the modbus config in mach), to the "Tick Count" termination object.

Scott

Scott,

I've programmed the TickCount function in Arduino too. I am counting the pulses produced during the last 50 ms, multiply it by 20 to get the pulses per second and then pass it over to Mach through modbus. But still get the same result . Almost 1 second's delay between MPG movement and machine axes response. The same thing I got when I was not using the MPG TickCount in Mach brains.

Zafar

89

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Prima Lathe conversion

« on: September 18, 2013, 01:43:11 AM »

This is the one I longed to do for a long time. Prima is one of the finest brands of Lathes produced in Pakistan. Last week a customer asked if I would do a CNC conversion on his one year old Prima. Yesterday it arrived here in my workshop and already stripped off of it's gears, lead screw, feed rod, feed carriage, end brackets and all. Over the course of one month we are going to install AC servos, ball screws, limit/home switches, VFD, Spindle Encoder, Smooth Stepper, and of course Mach3. I will try to document it (which is always a hard job for me ). Here is a photo of the stripped down machine.

90

Third party software and hardware support forums. / Re: cncdrive.com UC-100 and UC-300 any views, review?

« on: September 14, 2013, 10:30:28 AM »

I am also a user of SS, both USB and Ethernet. It's Ethernet version is far more superior than USB. Wanted to experiment with UC100 and UC300. Also using their DC drives too. Superb service from Balazs, both technical and commercial. Going to order the UC-300 now.

Zafar